Last week I attended the Canada Marketing Summit in Vancouver. Many of the speakers I’d never heard of before, though some I had. It’s hard to put a finger on a particular highlight, because I think in general there were a lot of take-aways.
Troy White talked about big idea marketing; timely advice for me as I’m in the seedling stages on two particular projects that will really benefit from a “big idea” that pulls it all together.
Josh Anderson talked about Nanacast – a sweet piece of technology that I’m looking forward to implementing in my sales process pretty soon. In short, it allows full integration with your merchant account, auto responder, membership site and much more. One click upsells, downsells, dynamic pricing, and hordes of nifty membership features make this a no-brainer for anyone that has a product and wants to optimize the sales process. Heard about micro-continuity? You can easily implement that with Nanacast.
Randy Charach talked about domaining – something I’ve never really known much about. It is one of those shady gray areas that most internet marketers don’t really know much about. Of course everyone knows how to buy a domain, but how to pick out ones that are going to be good investments? Or how to monetize ones that are just sitting there? Interesting stuff, though not likely anything that I will be pursuing. Just too much on my plate at the moment.
Glenn Dietzel is an amazing guy who turns people into thought leaders in their field. He’s got this process to turn anybody into somebody in no time flat. 2 things: The marketplace will blindly believe the words of an expert, and with limited time and opportunity, they will choose the option perceived to be on top. Put these two together and use them effectively and you can basically eliminate your competition from the playing field.
Trevor Crook (the Toecracker) spoke on copywriting, giving all kinds of pointers on how to optimize copy, sometimes only by changing one letter! For instance, changing “put” to “puts” in an add boosted response by 300%!
Ken McArthur did an interesting excercise in product development. Recognizing he couldn’t teach us everything he knows in such a short time period, he instead decided to demonstrate it. He ended up selling an un-created product, then enlisted the help of the product owners in the room to actually produce something. Hard to explain in a paragraph, but an interesting lesson in product development. If you don’t know – find someone who does and get them to help!
Pat Mesiti is this little ball of fire from Australia. He’s incredibly inspirational, and has a remarkable way of straight-shooting people right between the eyes, and having them enjoy the process. Some one liner take-aways: “Giving extinguishes greed,” “Better to be a thermostat than a thermometer,” and “When the dream is big enough, the facts don’t count.”
Jeff Mills spoke on outsourcing, a topic that has become closer to me in recent months as I’ve hired my own employee full time in the Philippines. It was helpful to hear the degree to which he’s outsourced his business – and really put a spot light on the importance of getting trustworthy, capable people to help build your business for you.
